The live wire topic

During my IFS training recently, I volunteered to be the client in a practice session on polarized parts. I brought what I figured was a throw-away topic: a painter who hasn't finished the exterior of our house. An email about it had landed over lunch, and it was still a live wire in my body. Tight chest, heat, a pull to react right now. Part of me had already ruled on it: not strategic, not important, not worth the room.

It didn't stay a painter story. Under it was a decades-old argument between an exhausted fighter part and a sensitive exiled part of me that had been dominated into submission and silence when I was a young child. I got to meet both from Self instead of refereeing the fight. Both were heard, and neither had to win.

We learn early to set the live wire aside. It's 'too messy' we may tell ourselves. Instead we edit and bring the tidy, 'strategic' topics forward: the promotion, the busy season, the big meeting. Those topics have their place. But the body doesn't sort by importance. It points to what's alive, and what's alive is often what we've filed as too small, too personal, or too unfinished to bring into the room.

This week, before your next one-on-one, coaching session, or hard conversation, pause and ask: what's alive in me right now that I've been calling insignificant? Then start there.

The topic we call a throw-away is sometimes just the one still plugged in, and our live wires may be invitations to transformational growth.